


Hot takes with Mr Gautier

by Curlsandcollege



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Teachers, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Gen, Post-Canon, WAY post canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:42:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25245577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curlsandcollege/pseuds/Curlsandcollege
Summary: The rules of Hot Takes with Mr Gautier were simple. Discuss with your table something you think that the horribly dry and rigid curriculum had left out, framed wrong, or just given a wholly biased view. Share a hot take, and if you can support it with evidence bonus points on the upcoming test.In the modern era of Fodlan history teacher Sylvain A Gautier has finished up his unit on the Fodlan War of Reunification, and is happy to hear his students' hot takes on the period. But when a student tries to stir the pot claiming that Crests weren't even real something snaps.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 47





	Hot takes with Mr Gautier

**Author's Note:**

> Reading the endings does anyone else get a hard, "Okay this is absolutely how historians scrubbed history" vibe? 
> 
> Sylvain and Dedue's supports made me think Sylvain is the kid who starts his comment in class with "Hot Take but..." and then his argument is flawless and backed up by evidence.
> 
> I'm just really invested in what happens after the war. Inspiration struck

“And that just about wraps up our review of The War of Reunification and the first few decades of the New Dawn of Fodlan”    
  
Sylvain glanced at the clock in the corner of his classroom, his pacing was a little fast but he had confidence that this group would be able to fill the space. He leaned back against his desk, watching his students shift at their tables. He knew that they knew what was coming next. Classrooms thrive on routine and his was well established by this point in the semester. But it never hurt to build up some anticipation, make them doubt him until he swooped in to fill their expectations.   
  
“Which means we have time for some hot takes…” he let his voice trail off feigning disappointment as his students erupted. The rules of  _ Hot Takes With Mr Gautier  _ were simple. Discuss with your table something you think that the horribly dry and rigid curriculum had left out, framed wrong, or just given a wholly biased view. Share a hot take, and if you can support it with evidence bonus points on the upcoming test.    
  


This, right here, was why he loved teaching high school. He could frame actual theory and enrichment as something illicit and they would eat it up. He could reward his students for their ability to engage, question, and really think about what they were learning. And if it gave him some jollies, and secret petty revenge on his teachers growing up who would shut him down when he asked too many questions about the extremely clear flaws in what he was being taught, well… that was a bonus. No student was going to be shot down for asking about a different perspective in his domain.    
  
“Anyone want to start?”    
  
A hand shot up, “KING DIMITRI THE FIRST WAS TOTALLY GAY!”    
  
Off to a good start already. A classic for this unit, and one that anyone closely reading the textbook should reasonably deduce. Tamping down his pride, Sylvain played dumb, “And why do you think that? I’d need evidence to support such a controversial argument.”

His student furiously turned pages in her notebook as her table whispered.    
  
“Okay like… first of all his retainer General Molinaro is this nobody from Duscar when mostly Dimitri surrounded himself with other nobles from similar backgrounds. Super controversial at the time to have a Duscurian as one of his closest advisors, and Dimitri early in his rule really was not a pot stirrer.” 

“He takes Molinaro with him through his entire life, Molinaro never assumes any other title or gets any land despite his service and contributions to the war. And really come on, General Molinaro never marries or has any kids despite the fact his people were almost wiped out! King Dimitri does marry but seemingly only has one kid who carries his bloodline, and the queen kind of pitters out of any mentions after that. And then the LETTERS”   
  
This gives Sylvain pause, those letters are definitely not part of the standard public school curriculum. 

She stops and chews on the edge of her pencil, collecting her thoughts “We have a lot of King Dimitri’s personal letters preserved, we read some for homework, but in nearly all of them King Dimitri refers to his wife as “My dear friend” so like… I’d be pissed if my husband called me his dear friend almost exclusively”    
  
Her neighbor continues where she left off. “Also they’re buried together! Not to be too “Sappho and her friend” but the reading refers to the two of them as being “like family” in private which is clearly code and besides Molinaro fully is buried next to the king. Still! You can literally go see their graves! Like yes, we could say that they were close, but we have lots of graves of other high level people in the War of Reunification and  _ none _ of them are buried in the royal cemetery.”    
  
Sylvain stands up from his desk and walks over to collect the first table’s cosigners “Any other evidence?”    
  
“I mean there’s a de-emphasis on Crested blood under his rule and inherited titles, which could be a lot of things but hey if I were a king and deeply in love with a man who I obviously couldn’t marry because I had to keep my bloodline going I might try to change the social order to make that more doable for people like me.”    
  


He grabs the paper, five students had cosigned the hot take. He walks purposely, letting them stew. Giving ten seconds for the other students in the class to wrap their heads around this argument.    
  
“You’re probably right” He pauses and glances as his students light up in victory. “This is something you’ll learn in college if you look at the rebuilding period of Fodlan, which you obviously all will because your learning of history does not and should not end at this class. But yeah while our textbook isn’t super happy to mention this little detail and is more comfortable using coded phrases because it’s not super fun to think of the fact that one of history’s most important figures fully cheated on his wife a lot, there’s a bunch of letters where King Dimitri refers to General Molinaro as “My Beloved” so uh… yeah. King Dimitri I, not straight. Points justly awarded.”    
  
The table cheered. Another hand shoots up, and before Sylvain can acknowledge the student, he starts speaking. 

  
“Okay Mr Gautier this is probably a really hot take but I’ve been stewing on it for a while and like… I don’t think Crests are actually real?”   
  
Sylvain almost chokes. They just spent the last month talking about a war that largely hinged on the role of Crests on their continent and in the system of nobility. People lived and died and inherited or were disowned over such a thing but a teenager sits proudly declaring that they simply… didn’t exist.    
  
Sylvain breathes and runs his hand through his hair. This is what he brought on himself when he asked 17 year olds to try to parse out their own opinions on history. His job was to teach them to think like historians. He should let his student try to prove a point. At least it wasn’t  _ Edelgard did nothing wrong _ , a perennial favorite of those who like to shit stir. 

  
“Interesting… do you have any evidence for that?” He wears a mask of interest on his face, cold, staring, challenging.    
  
“In this time Nobles try to justify their right to rule claiming they have special blood. This discourages them from going around and having lots of illegitimate children and gives them a reason to hold their place in society. It’s literally their right, they’re superior genetically. But what if it’s like, yeah of course they seem magical or superhuman but they’re not really. They’re bred to be stronger than everyone else, have better weapons, and are literally trained to fight from birth. That’s not Crests, or whatever, that’s just privilege.”    
  
Sylvain can follow his argument. It’s definitely wrong but he can try to get the student to see that on his own right, he can push him and teach him and definitely not snap. He gently challenges, “So what of all the cases of disinheritance for lack of Crest, the Empire’s system of the emperor having consorts and essentially practicing pologamy in order to try to produce a Crested heir?”    
  
“Crests are just the excuse probably. Like, whoops our older son is a piece of… poop, guess the younger child has manifested a “Crest” so let’s let him be the heir instead! Crests were just code for being really strong. Like keep having kids until you have a pro athlete or whatever.”    
  
Sylvain almost wants to laugh. This had been his thesis topic, the ways in which Crest based inheritance shaped cultures in pre-unification times. His student doesn’t know this, he has no way to know just how outmatched he was on this topic specifically. But Sylvain pushes one more time.    
  
“So then why all the fear of Crests fading and bloodlines weakening? I’m hearing a lot of speculation and no actual evidence.”   
  
“I mean that is the evidence! There’s hundreds of years of  _ Crests Crests Crests _ and then, not to read ahead in the book Mr Gautier, but suddenly they’re not important anymore? So quickly? If people were really genetically superior how would they possibly have-”    
  
“You’re treading on dangerous ground with genetics here, kid” Sylvain cuts him off sharply. Mask still on, professional, cold, “There’s a very clear explanation for why Crests basically drop off the map overnight. Simple, elegant, and not because they’re fake. Does anyone have a guess?”    
  


His class stares at him in stunned silence. He doesn't snap like this. He’s a fun teacher, a silly one, one who’s happy to talk about the extramartial sex life of a king from hundreds of years ago. Sylvain takes a breath and simply says,

“Gunpowder” 

The silence continues.   
  
“Hundreds of years of history, strife, literal wars, reform, philosophy, science. All wiped out the second Fodlan starts importing gunpowder from Almyra in 1298.”   
  
A few looks of recognition start to dawn.   
  
“Crests were in a lot of ways really oppressive and that oppression reached a boiling point in the war of Reunification. Nobody was fighting a war over something completely _fake_. The next few generations work to build a system that would have taken emphasis off of Crest based inheritance but the biggest reason that they drop off the historical record is sadly not the ideals of a few powerful people. It’s because warfare changed and suddenly the ability to stab someone a little better or faster than others became obsolete.”   
  
Another hand raises, “So does that mean that, theoretically, some people might still have Crests?”   
  
Sylvain smiles, “See! That right there is a hot take. Actually it probably does. The technology for testing for such things is lost to time, but yes, especially if you can trace your lineage back to the ten elites somewhere in your line, there is a tiny chance that there’s a genetic marker there that people back in the 1100s would have described as a Crest.”   
  
“Do you have one Mr Gautier?” Mr “Crests don’t exist” asks smarmily.   
  
“Do I what?”   
  
“I mean you’re literally a Gautier, do you have a Crest?”   
  
Sylvain laughs. He has a college friend who had figured out that his lineage did indeed go back to an elite and _asked_ _him for a sample of his blood_ trying to do that very research.  
  
“Would that I knew! My parents named me after Sylvain Jose Gautier, who was most famous for helping form treaties with Sreng in the early 1200s and being a pretty great general in his own right. But he was also one of the loudest voices in the anti-Crest movement of the 1190s. While he did have many descendants, none of his direct descendants were listed as being Crested. Unclear if that’s because they literally had no Crests or he refused to have them registered”   
  
“Mr Gautier this is maybe a little inappropriate but isn’t he also the origin of the phrase-”   
  


**BRRRRRRR**

Saved by the bell.    
  
“Okay anyone who feels they have a great hot take write it down and email it to me tonight. If you’re googling  _ I WILL KNOW _ so at least cite your sources. Dismissed, see everyone tomorrow” 

As he watched his students file out he slumped into his desk chair. Sylvain had forty minutes to shove some food in his face and grade before his next class. This was one of the first times he hadn’t had to defend Sylvain Jose Gautier to his students. He would fully admit being named after the man who was so famously unfaithful that  _ Gautier _ was slang for cheating wasn’t his favorite thing his parents had done to him. Amongst many, many others. But his namesake was generally a pretty chill and brilliant guy who was progressive, and actually  _ never cheated on his spouse _ . 

But that was more college level, and Sylvain A Gautier had spent the past thirty years of his life handling jokes about his name. 

  
Honestly, if a teenager could come up with something new or creative to say about it he’d probably give them bonus points for it.    
  


**Author's Note:**

> I literally said, out loud, "Oh no it's Sappho and her friend" when I read the Dimitiri/Dedue ending. 
> 
> The gunpowder thing occurred to me when I couldn't sleep last night. Like it's all well and good that they try to reform the system but Crests become obsolete the second warfare progresses past the need to stab people better than anyone else. 
> 
> I haven't written fanfiction since I was a freshman in high school and now I teach high school so it's... been a while. This is the one that burst out for whatever reason.


End file.
